Oliver Smith Profile picture
Telegraph Travel hack. Supporter of liberty. Opponent of hypocrisy. Ramblings my own.
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Aug 13, 2021 13 tweets 3 min read
"If only we'd locked down earlier".

This remains the most trotted out "lesson" of the pandemic, and one of the easiest to dismiss.

🧵 Lockdowns are a temporary fudge. They can buy a healthcare system a little time to prepare, but (unless you literally weld everyone indoors, shut down the economy, and seal the borders – permanently) they simply kick the can down the road.
Aug 13, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
"So now we know: Sweden got it largely right, and the British establishment catastrophically wrong... far fewer deaths per capita, a maintenance of basic freedoms and opportunities, including schooling, and a recession less than half as severe as our own."
telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/1… The article sums it up succinctly. Lockdowns were barely more effective at stopping Covid than voluntary guidance, but they tanked our economy and created a non-Covid health crisis.
Aug 4, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
After promising simpler travel rules, the Govt has moved 4 destinations to the red list, 5 to amber and 7 to green, kept the green "watchlist", raised the cost of hotel quarantine, made new testing recommendations for Spain and kept the ripoff 3 PCR test rule for all. Simple. telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/…
Jul 23, 2021 17 tweets 5 min read
Discriminatory, unscientific and never-ending: the madness of the UK’s travel red list.

[Thread🧵] The red list, from which flights are banned and arrivals must stay in a quarantine “hotel”, now numbers 60. Almost every nation on the list is in the developing world, while most Western countries, despite higher infection rates, have been spared – it’s really not a good look.
Jul 17, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
Can someone please explain why we're seeing 60 times as many positive tests now, when 67% of the country has been double jabbed, compared with last summer? I thought the vaccines were supposed to reduce transmission? 🤔 The Delta variant isn't 60 times as transmissible. And we're testing eight times as many people, not 60.
Jul 17, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read
It was already crystal clear to most people, but the Government's decision to essentially ban travel to France, apparently over concerns about the Beta/South African variant (remember that one?), highlights once again just how illogical our restrictions are... The South African variant is already here. It has been since December. Indeed, 808 cases of it have been recorded on British shores and this is doubtless an underestimate. These restrictions will achieve nothing, except to ruin holidays, weddings, funerals and family reunions.
Jul 16, 2021 5 tweets 1 min read
The comments on this suggest a population truly at the end of its tether. As ever, Telegraph readers get it.
"We are living in a totalitarian state, a never ending nightmare orchestrated by Boris and his band of misery inflicters." telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/… "80k can go to the football at Wembley but I can't sit on a beach in the south of France."

"The Johnson Joke Junta strike again.
Are they running the place by rolling dice?"

"If this government really wants to destroy vaccine confidence, they're doing a great job."
Jul 12, 2021 12 tweets 2 min read
If you think the "Covid safe" high street is going back to normal on July 19, think again.
That's the lesson from my trip to Boots Optician's today. Wanting to buy new sunglasses (they had some nice Ray-Bans in the window) I was subjected to some of the most OTT measures yet... Firstly, my wife, my baby and I couldn't just pop in and browse, as there was a rope blocking the entrance and a woman standing guard dressed like the first responder at a nuclear disaster.
May 15, 2021 13 tweets 2 min read
What the Covid inquiry needs to address:
Why we abandoned decades of pandemic planning and copied the draconian lockdowns of the CCP.
Why, given the clear early evidence that Covid is a danger to the elderly and largely harmless to the young, a shielding policy wasn't considered. Why the Government weaponised fear to such an extent that thousands died of non-Covid illnesses as they were too afraid to seek medical help.
Why any restrictions were placed on outdoor activity given that Covid is almost always caught indoors and obesity is the big risk factor.
Apr 3, 2021 6 tweets 1 min read
The comments on this are a thing of beauty. Not sure it's going the way Mr Gove would have hoped.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/0… "Vaccine or health passports are a terrible idea, and have NO place whatsoever in a Western democracy. Even Russia has no plans to implement them. They should not be required for any disease or health condition, let alone one with just a 0.3% fatality rate."
Feb 21, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
This is Italy right now. More infections per capita than the UK, just one fifth as many vaccinated, but restaurants and shops are open, there are no stay at home orders or travel restrictions, and schools are open. Hola from Spain. More Covid cases per capita than the UK, and, yes, we've vaccinated five times as many people. But guess which country permits its citizens to dine, shop and socialise?
Feb 19, 2021 5 tweets 1 min read
This cracking analysis from UEA microbiologist David Livermore reveals just how pointless our border controls are.
He writes: "Will travel restrictions, and threatened 10-year prison sentences for those who flout them, protect us from new variants? No."

telegraph.co.uk/travel/advice/… "Firstly because the South African variant is already circulating in the UK and is doubtless under-detected. Secondly, because they will continue to be imported from elsewhere in the world and, as a trading nation, we cannot isolate ourselves."
Feb 13, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
By adopting China's lockdowns, we copied a country that:

- Is committing genocide
- "Disappears" or imprisons journalists and activists, and harasses their families
- Tortures animals
- Executes more people than the rest of the world combined

amnesty.org/en/countries/a… - Operates a terrifying social credit system, like something out of Black Mirror
- Censors all media and the internet
- Persecutes LGBT people
- Jails religious leaders
- Runs forced labour camps
- Harvests people's organs